She thought a moment and said, "I should have shut up and just let you sing."
An undercover police car is anything but undercover to most street prostitutes. A champagne-gold Crown Victoria might as well have "VICE" written in Day-Glo lettering on the doors and hood. The only thing more obvious would be to light the gumball and run the siren. Mindful of that, Heat parked around the corner from the Sophisticate Inn so she and Rook could make their approach without lighting up the radar too much. It could only help that the parking spot was behind a mound of uncollected garbage.
In the manager's office a skeletal dude, with a nasty patch of hair missing where somebody had ripped it out, was reading the afternoon edition of the New York Ledger. Cassidy Towne's face filled the space above the fold. The headline was in giant font, the kind usually reserved for V-E Day and moonwalks. It read: R.I.P. = M.I.A
Murdered Tattler's Body Missing
For Nikki Heat today, there was just no escape.
The dude with the pale skin and bloody patch of scalp kept reading and asked them if they wanted it for an hour or a day. "If you get day, ice and baby oil comes with."
Rook leaned over to Heat and whispered, "I think I know why they call this the Sophisticate."
Nikki elbowed him and said, "Actually, we're looking for one of your guests, Holly Flanders." She watched his eyes dart up from the paper toward the ceiling above his head and then back to her.
"Flanders," he said. "I'm trying to remember." And then, pointedly, "Maybe you can help me."
"Sure." Nikki drew aside her blazer and flashed the tin on her belt. "That help you any?"
The room number he gave them was down a dingy second-floor hall that smelled like disinfectant and puke. There was an outside chance Ichabod Crane was going to call the room and tip Flanders off, so Heat told Rook to stay down there to watch him. He didn't like the assignment, but agreed. Before she left, she reminded him what happened last time he didn't stay downstairs when she told him to.
"Oh, yeah. I have a vague recollection. Something about getting taken hostage at gunpoint, right?…"
Behind every door she passed, daytime television blared. It was as if people blasted TV noise to cover life noise and only succeeded in making more noise. Inside one room, a woman was crying and moaning, "It's all I had left, it's all I had left." It sounded like prison to Heat.
She stopped outside 217 and positioned herself off-line with the door. She didn't know how much to put into Ludlow's warning about the handgun purchase, but she checked her coat clearance anyway. Always good policy if you planned to go home that night.
She knocked and listened. A TV was on in there, too, although not as loud. Seinfeld, from the bass guitar riff after the laugh. She knocked once more and listened. Kramer was getting banned from the produce market.
"Shut up out there," came a man's voice from somewhere across the hall.
Heat knocked louder and announced herself. "Holly Flanders, NYPD, open this door." As soon as she said the word, the door flew open and a chubby man with braided pigtails ran past her and up the hall. He was naked and carrying his clothes.
The door had a pneumatic closer, and before it shut, Nikki crouched low and clotheslined it open with her left arm as she put her hand on her gun butt. "Holly Flanders, show yourself." She heard Jerry himself getting thrown out of the produce market and then a window sash thrown in the room.
She rolled in low and came up with her Sig Sauer just in time to see a woman's leg disappear out the window. Heat ran to it, pressed her back against the wall, and made a quick look out and then back. A yelp came from below, and she looked down to see a young woman, early twenties, in jeans but topless, lying on her back on a pile of trash.
When Heat holstered her weapon and ran out into the hall, it was crowding with people, mostly women, coming out of their rooms to see what the excitement was. Nikki shouted, "NYPD, back, back, clear the way," which only brought more curiosity-seekers. Most of them were slow movers, too; drugged or dazed, what did it matter? After fighting her way through them, she bounded the stairs in twos and pushed through the glass doors to the outside. A large dent in a black trash bag marked Holly's landing spot.
Heat stepped to the sidewalk and looked right. Saw nothing. Then left, and could not believe what she saw. Holly Flanders being led back to her by the elbow, escorted by Rook. She was wearing his sport coat but was still topless underneath.
When they arrived, he said, "Think we could get her into the Milmar like this?" An hour later, wearing the clean all-purpose white blouse Nikki kept in her bull-pen file drawer to change into after all-nighters, field scrapes, or coffee mishaps, Holly Flanders waited in Interrogation. Heat and Rook stepped in and sat side by side across from her. She didn't speak. Just looked up over their heads, staring at the slip of acoustical tile that ran above the observation mirror.
"You don't have much of a rap sheet, at least not as an adult," Nikki began, opening Holly's file. But I have to warn you that, as of today, you've taken your game to the next level."
"Why, because I ran?" She finally brought her eyes down to them. They were bloodshot and puffy, rimmed by too much mascara. Somewhere in there, given some good living, and losing the hardness, thought Nikki, was somebody pretty. Maybe even beautiful. "I was afraid. How did I know who you were or what you were doing?"
"I announced myself as police twice. The first time you may have been too busy with your john."
"I saw that guy racing through the lobby," said Rook. "May I say? No man over fifty should wear pigtails." He caught Nikki's shut-up look. "I'm done."
"That's beside the point, Holly. Your main worry isn't the flight or the hooking. In your room, we found a Ruger nine-millimeter handgun, unlicensed and loaded."
"I need that for protection."
"We also found a laptop computer, stolen, by the way."
"I found it."
"Well, just like the other charges, that's not your worry. What's on the computer is your worry. We've been looking at the hard drive and we've found a number of letters. Threatening letters and extortion demands addressed to Cassidy Towne."
This part was getting through to her. The hard pose was crumbling as the detective slowly, quietly, and deliberately tightened the screw with each revelation. "Are those letters familiar to you, Holly?"
Holly didn't answer. She picked at the chips of nail polish on her fingers and kept clearing her throat.
"I have one more thing to ask you about. Something that wasn't in your room. Something we found somewhere else."
The manicure destruction stopped and a puzzled look crossed Holly's face, as if the other things were something she expected and had to cope with. Whatever this lady cop was now referring to seemed a mystery to her. "Like what?"
Nikki slid a photocopy out of the folder. "This is your fingerprint array from your booking on a prostitution charge." She pushed it across the table to let Holly examine it. Then Detective Heat took another photocopy from the folder. "This is another set of prints, also yours. These were taken by our technicians this morning off several doorknobs at the home of Cassidy Towne."
The young woman didn't respond. Her lower lip trembled and she slid the paper away. Then found her spot to stare at again above the Magic Mirror.
"We took these fingerprints because Cassidy Towne was murdered last night. In that apartment. The one with your fingerprints." Nikki watched Holly's face grow pale and then still. And then Nikki continued. "What would a prostitute be doing in Cassidy Towne's apartment? Were you there for sex?"
"No."
Rook asked, "Were you one of her sources, maybe? A tipster?"